Jarmathra
''Jarmathra ''is a play by the Toranese playwright Sidharva, written and first shown in 1347. A surrealist piece focusing on the meaninglessness of war and the line between sanity and madness, the play follows Jarmathra, a soldier in the Minaran Wars, as he seeks to avenge the mysterious death of his father. Jarmathra's actions to find his father's murderer get increasing drastic, until he eventually turns to murder, and, with each man he kills, Jarmathra loses a piece of his own humanity and gradually becomes only a ghost. By the time that he finally tracks down his father's killer, he is so angry that he lashes out, and finds out that the man who he has killed was in fact his father, and he looks up to see that the man that he was following is not in the room, and was only a separate version of himself. Jarmathra ''was the third of Sidharva's three Great Plays, and was his last coherent play before his descent into madness. It was an extremely difficult play for him to write, as he drew largely from his own experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia. It also serves as a powerful critique of war, portraying it as brutal, meaningless and mad; although the war portrayed is supposedly the Minaran Wars, it much more closely resembles the Great Reformist War in its scope and nature. ''Jarmathra ''has therefore often been interpreted as an anti-war play, and even an anti-authority play, criticizing Rajam III's belligerent foreign policy. Although it confused many audiences when first released due to its themes of horror, fantasy, and surrealism, today it is considered one of the greatest works of Toranese literature. Of Sidharva's great works, ''Jarmathra ''is often considered to be the most daring and innovative, and it has had a vast influence on Toranese literature since. It has been adapted for film three times, most notably by Kiyesomli Amarthë in 1963. There have also been a number of novels, films, and other plays based off of ''Jarmathra, often setting it in modern times; notable examples include Havasta's novel Jarmathra and the King of Bones ''from 1891, setting the story during the time of the Toranese Civil War, and the Noriki novel ''The Blood of My Fathers ''by Giyes Orshanatav, setting the story during the Great War of Norik. History Sidharva began serious work on ''Jarmathra ''after completing ''The Song of the Sea in 1344; however, there is evidence that he had notes for the story as early as 1326. He wrote it concurrently with the second and third parts of his Redemption Cycle, which he considered to be his magnum opus. Sidharva struggled with his sanity during his writing of Jarmathra, and the rate of strange behavior on his part increased dramatically during the last year that he was writing the play, which could have a connection to its notoriously bizarre ending. The play was premiered at the Royal Theater on April 5, 1347 to a large audience, and initially got a mixed to negative reception, although Rajam himself found it very interesting. Soon, however, the play became very popular among certain groups among the elite, while others claimed that it was blasphemous, meaningless, insane, or disturbing. It has been banned in Toran numerous times, including during the reign of Viyadjeya and later under Asuka. Despite that, it has remained one of the most popular Toranese plays ever since its first release, and continues to elicit debate, discussion and controversy to the present day. Characters Many of the characters in ''Jarmathra ''are not named; there are only four named characters in the entire play, although a number of other unnamed characters appear. Jarmathra - a foot soldier in the Minaran Wars from a respected family Jarmathra's father - a general in the war, killed mysteriously Arinthra - Jarmathra's closest companion, often referred to as his "brother" Prasin - Jarmathra's commanding officer Listre - a Minaran officer Plot ''Jarmathra ''begins with Jarmathra meeting with his friend Arinthra to talk about their youth, when an unnamed messenger arrives to inform him of his father's murder. Jarmathra and Arinthra return to Jarmathra's father's tent to find that the man is indeed dead, with a red knife left in his chest. Jarmathra takes the red knife and swears that he will discover who killed his father, and Arinthra swears to join him. Together, they seek out Prasin, their commanding officer, to confront him about the murder. Prasin brushes off their demands, and informs them that there will be a battle in three days, and that they should be training. When Jarmathra insists that his father's death is more important, Prasin orders him to forget about his father and focus on what is important: winning the war. Jarmathra, however, remains determined to discover his father's murderer by himself. He is able to track the knife back to a Minaran officer named Listre, whom he seeks out; however, Prasin finds him trying to cross into enemy territory, and tries to stop him. Jarmathra is so angered that he kills Prasin, although he later tells Arinthra that he simply found the officer dead. After he kills Prasin, Jarmathra immediately begins claiming that he feels ill, and at one point asks where his hands have gone, before realizing that he still has them. With Prasin eliminated from the equation, Jarmathra and Arinthra cross into Minaran territory to seek out Listre. On the way to find Listre, they encounter two Minaran guards, who they are forced to kill. They continue to the Minaran camp, and Jarmathra begins having unsettling dreams that he cannot remember. They enter the Minaran camp as peaceful emissaries, claiming protection by the "rules of warfare." Listre lets them in and calls them to a meeting. He civilly denies having killed Jarmathra's father, and insists that the knife had been stolen from him two days before the attack. Jarmathra, furious, attacks him, but Listre manages to seize back the knife and has them imprisoned. Jarmathra escapes in the night, steals back the same knife, and cuts Listre's throat. Two guards wake up, and he promptly kills them, but not before one of them reasserts Listre's claim that the knife had been stolen, and that it was by a "man of eighteen years in all black, with short hair, dark eyes and a scar down the left side of his face." Jarmathra swears to find the man, without realizing that this definition perfectly describes him. Jarmathra is forced to kill five more men to sneak Arinthra out of the camp, and together they return to Toranese territory. Once there, Jarmathra encounters a guard who greets them, a young man wearing black with short hair and a scar on the right side of his face. Thinking that this man is the killer, Jarmathra promptly kills him. Jarmathra soon finds that no one else seems to see him besides Arinthra, and walks around Toranese territory without being seen. His disturbing dreams continue, although he still does not remember them. One night he wakes up in a fit of passion to see Arinthra, who had gotten a scar on the left side of his face during the conflict with the guard. Seeing the scar, Jarmathra decides that Arinthra was the murderer the entire time and kills him. After Jarmathra leaves their tent, he now finds that he can no longer interact at all with the real world; only his knife can do damage, but no one sees him at all, only a floating knife. He also sees Prasin, alive and well, but thinks nothing of it. In a dream, Jarmathra sees the man in black, and when he wakes up he swears that he can still see him, even though no one is visible to the audience. Jarmathra follows him all of the way back to his original camp, and unknwoingly enters his father's tent through the back. He sees a man in the corner, and, deciding that it is the murderer, he promptly kils him. When the man collapses to the floor, Jarmathra sees that it is his father, and that there is no one else in the room. Realizing that he is own father's murderer, Jarmathra turns the knife on himself and tries to commit suicide, but finds that, as he has become a ghost, he cannot kill himself. He throws the knife back onto the ground, beside his father. Now that he is a ghost, he is forced to watch everything that happens; time accelerates as he watches himself kill Prasin and then sees the Toranese lose the battle with the Minarans because they have no commanding officer. He stands over the battlefield where the bodies of dead Toranese soldiers lie, and washes his hands with their blood before grinning at the audience.